Cllr Marion Smith welcomes Tesco move on Plastic Bags
“I was delighted when I was told by a very kind check out staff member that from 14th August, Tesco would be going green!
Along with the Friends of the Earth North Down and Ards group, I have been campaigning for some time now to reduce if not stop using plastic bags which are given out so freely when shopping. Tesco are actually using the incentive of financially rewarding their customers in the form of their point’s scheme. Basically their aim is to reward customers for using fewer new bags.
In January of this year I put forward a notice of motion to Council regarding the adverse environmental impact caused by the use of plastic bags in our society. Council wrote to the then Minister Lord Rooker, asking for a plastic bag tax to be introduced in the very near future.
Since then, the plastic bag mountain continues to grow, we as consumers in the UK are accumulating some 17 billion plastic bags every year. It has been long recognised that our environment is suffering from the plastic bag blight! They are to be found from one end of the earth to the other, they are hanging from trees, killing livestock, even killing our sea life.
Every year an estimated 4 billion end up as litter, I am told this could circle the earth some 63 times. The problem is plastic bags don’t wear out, and the period of photodegrade, (which means they break down into smaller and smaller toxic bits) is estimated at some hundreds of years in landfill and 450 years in water.
This scheme while it is to be welcomed, along with stores such as Lidl and Ikea who charge for their bags as a form of reducing the number used. Or, on the other hand there is the PlasTax introduced in Southern Ireland in March 2002 has thought to have scaled down usage by some 90%.
Whatever form we chose to reduce the plastic bag blight, be it points, paying for our plastic bags or a PlasTax, we must realise that plastic bags must not be part of that inheritance.”